Book Number 2

MAZES:

This side-scrolling adventure maze is a spiritual successor to the Tomb of the Pharoah, and relies heavily on the trick of illusionary elements. This is also one of the first mazes I ever did in color.

Since Pac-Man itself is played on a maze, it seemed appropriate to make a Pac-Man maze on its native playfield. I had originally intended to have multiple power pills and blue ghosts in the maze, but later decided to make eating four blue ghosts the end goal of the maze, just like the game! I like the crazy ghost in the middle.

Donkey Kong Jr. was one of my favorite games as a kid, apparently. As a maze, my childhood friend and I would "host" these for each other, which allowed me to moderate his proper use of "Jump Zones" and "Duck Zones." You're just going to have to be on the honor system.

Tron was also one of my favorite games as a kid. This maze is pretty straightforward, yet I tried to add a bit of trickiness by not allowing the "player" to move downwards, only forwards or to the side. This made for some dead ends that were not very apparent. Also, you don't know which building is the finish until you consult the key, leading to "replay value." ;)

This deluxe color maze is one of the few unique intellectual proprerty mazes I had created, and is in 3D! I had envisioned a complex overlapping set of maze corridors, but things quickly got to the point where I needed to color-code each level of the maze. I also tried to use shadows from overlapping corridors as "fake acid pools." Psych! Also, Glorbox? Really? Eh. I was, like, eleven.

In turned out that the play screens for the Popeye game weren't complex enough to support very much in terms of maze design, so this ended up being the only Popeye maze I made, despite two more unique levels in the game.

A racing game is an unusual inspiration for a maze, but this ended up as one of the best mazes in the book, primarily because it is a straightforward maze anyone can complete without a referree looking over their shoulder!

Proof That Playing Video Games Inspires Creativity?

The only evidence I can offer is empirical evidence, ranging from this website and the podcasts itself made when I was an adult, to the mazes drawn when I wa a child. I hope to inspire my own and other children to freely create, when they are inspired by what they play.